You hate. You love. You hate to love because loving makes you weak, it makes you need, it makes you hate. Love exposes the most vulnerable of yourself to that one person, breaks down all the walls you worked so hard and long to build. You lose all focus, you lose sight of your goals and aspirations. You forget who you are to become who you want that person to like. You sell yourself short of your own identity to fit into everything that person is. Then you realize you are weak because you do not have a backbone. You need to get the attention of that person. You need that person to approve, to see, to nod, to smile, to laugh, to want to see you.
If you'd see yourself from a third person's eyes, you'd hate yourself for everything you have become. But not yet. You're still okay with it because this feeling drives you. This feeling that for the first time in so long you are ALIVE. There is confusion. The world turns faster than you can process, everything seems out of control. But you like it. You fucking love it. You could feel your heart beating, you could hear your breathing, long and constant. You can actually see your pupils dilate, that smirk that runs across your face whenever that person's name is mentioned, and how those wrinkles around your eyes form showing everyone able to see that there is a lot of hidden truth behind that smirk.
But what you hate most is the fall that usually comes after the high. The fear of failure, of rejection, of crashing and burning. The depression that falls onto you almost immediately, crushing all your bones, leaving you bleeding by the sidewalk alone and cold. You shiver. Your breath becomes short and rapid. Your chest hurts like it has been stabbed repeatedly by a serrated knife. All these pain inside you. It implodes, you feel the pain you have never felt before, you cry but no tears would come out. And when you think you've recovered, it happens again. You think every following implosion feels less painful, they do not. They always feel like something worse than the one before. And it happens. Again. And again. And again.
Months pass, maybe a year. Everything you've ever achieved is gone. You find yourself washed up by the bank of a disgusting river, wounded, broken, tired. But suddenly you feel normal again. Your eyes can see light. Your chest doesn't feel heavy and it doesn't feel like it's bleeding from the inside. No implosion. No knives. You feel, for the first time ever, warmth in your hands. They do not tremble. Your face is not pale white. There are no longer tear marks on your cheeks. You stand up against the sunrise, it feels good. You take a breath, deep and long. You've been reborn. Much healing needs to be done, but you are glad you are out of the shithole.
You vowed never again to fall into this pit or anything like it. NEVER. So you reserve yourself, you stay away from everything that can lead to anything. Whenever someone comes near, you back off. Whenever you sense something, you immediately strategize an exit plan. You grow numb, you lose the senses. You think you're happy, able to do whatever it is you've always wanted to do, whenever you want to do them. You meet people, but they don't mean anything to you. Whenever feelings do arise, you disappear. Always running away.
People around you ask. Not the loyal ones, only the ones who love to gossip and back stab. Only the ones who'd be too quick to judge. Only those who think they know everything about the world and they can easily label you. Only those who have been having it easy and don't understand why you shouldn't do the same. Not the loyal ones. The loyal ones never ask everyone else, they only ask you. And when you do not want to tell, you will not pursuit further.
But people still talk. Why is it that you have such disgusting levels of self-esteem? Why can't you stand up and try again? Do you have some queer disease, or just without the disease? People love to talk, to compare you to what normal people would do. And when you do not fit into this category, you are worth the headlines of the evening edition.
Then out of nowhere, it happens. You have no idea how and when it happened, but it just fucking did. Stealthily it creeps into your head and embeds this cancer into you, and when you realized it's existence it is already in stage 3. Chronic. You've fallen in love again. All the strongest walls and defense systems crumble. The world around you falls apart. Volcanoes erupt, ice-caps melt, storm rages. Chaos, chaos, chaos. You have no idea what is happening. You do not know what to do. You don't want it, but you are redoing every single thing all over again.
Love. Need. Hate. The smirk. The smile. The lost identity. The heart beat, the pupils, the inability to contain anything. In your every waking hour. In your every dream. No backbone. You are hating yourself right now, but not yet. For once in the longest time, you feel fucking ALIVE. You want to keep that feeling for a little while more. Once in a while sanity knocks on your door. It tells you to come to your senses. It tells you to snap out of this. You do, for a while. Then that person shows another trait you respect so much, you immediately toss yourself into the whirlpool of self-destructive clouds again.
It comes a full circle now. You're in so deep now. You remember why you've always been trying so hard to avoid this. But it's too late. You look back to the gruesome years it took for you to recover, the pain you had to go through that no self-inflicting cuts can trump, and all the senses are suddenly knocked back into your head. I told you so, it says. I told you so, over and over again. How are you suppose to get yourself out of this shit now? Fucking idiot. Stupid fucking idiot!
